Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis [download]

Known for its lush, expansive music for string orchestra, the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis one of Vaughan Williams's most cherished works. Its beautiful theme comes from another English musician, the 16th-century composer Thomas Tallis. 

Vaughan Williams wrote the piece during one of his most fruitful periods of composition, after being commissioned by the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival. In the end, he presented a landmark piece that his biographer James Day calls 'unquestionably the first work by Vaughan Williams that is recognizably and unmistakably his and no one else's'. It became the work to cement Vaughan Williams' reputation not only at home, but across the rest of Europe.